Tuesday, January 13, 2009

Equipment cont.

The next piece of equipment I will write about is the fermenting bucket or a carboy.

After you boil your wort and it has cooled you will move it into a fermentor. These fermentors can be a food grade plastic bucket or glass carboy. These items need to be sanitized before adding your concoction into them. You will also need either a hole drilled into the lid of the buckets or rubber stoppers for the carboys, also known as bungs. The hole is for an airlock.

What is an airlock? Well it is an item that allows gases produced from the fermentation process to escape without letting air back in. This helps to keep the fermentation process clean. I have shaken a fermenting carboy and watched as a nice stream of liquid shot out the top of the bung/airlock! If the solution is bubbling the yeast is working move with caution if you have to move it!An airlock on a carboy bung.

An airlock in a bucket lid.

Some brewing , such as meads and wines, require a second racking. Racking by the way is what you just did if you moved your solution into a bucket or carboy to ferment.

When getting ready to bottle your brew or do another racking, move your fermentor a day or two ahead of time into position. This will give any sediment a chance to resettle.

A word here about buckets. First make sure they are food grade plastic buckets. IF you get your buckets from a restaurant any smells in that bucket will be transferred to your brew, not a good thing.

If you can get them glass carboys work really well. You can really see what is going on with your brew as it ferments! You can also use the plastic carboys as well if you need to in a pinch.